Quoted from: http://www.gopusa.com/news/2003/may/0513_texas_standstill.shtml

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Wendy Wright, Senior Policy Director of Concerned Women for America, characterized the Senate standstill saying, "Democratic senators are standing in the doorway of the Senate voting booth, forbidding the majority of senators from voting."

Wright pointed out that a minority of senators, by filibustering, "is attempting to throw out the results of the last Senate election, and replace majority rule with minority rule."

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Ummmmm..... filibustering is a time honored tradition, much like changing your party affiliation to prevent them from using the majority to stifle opposition when you think your party is way off base, as is the jase of senator Jeffords, former republican from Vermont.

Furthermore, majority rule is not supposed to be absolute. This country is a constitutional republic. Our very constitution is written to prevent the tyranny of the majority, thus, the filibuster.

more from the same article

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The strategy has been so successful in Washington, DC that Texas Democrats are employing a similar strategy to stop the legislature from conducting business. A group of 53 Democrats went into hiding on Monday to prevent a quorum. Texas law requires at least two-thirds of the 150 House members be present to take a vote. Yesterday's action is intended to block approval of a congressional redistricting bill that is said to favor Republicans.

...cut some irrelevant stuff out...

State police were dispatched to arrest the fugitive legislators, but it is being reported that that they have left the state to Oklahoma to avoid capture. Democrat staffers claimed to not know the whereabouts of the truants.

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Now ~this~ is a new tactic, quite different from a filibuster. The issue at hand is that Texas is trying to redistrict it's house and senate seats, and the Democrats in question clearly felt that their viewpoint was being ignored and that a compromise, the key to politics, was not being worked toward by the Texas Republicans.

So the Republicans sent out the Texas Rangers (*not the baseball team) to track down, arrest, and return the wayward legislators. I guess don't mess with Texas works for both sides of the fence.

The moral of this story?

Democracy at gunpoint is not Democracy at it's finest.